B/R Vehicles Matchup Guide (Part 2)

In my last article, which I recommend you read first and can be found here, I went over the B/R Vehicles list that half our team played at Pro Tour Dominaria, and how to sideboard and play against the two decks we expected would be most popular at the Pro Tour – B/R Vehicles and W/U Control. Today, I will be going over how to sideboard and play against the rest of the top decks, with some additional playing tips for piloting the deck.

We were fairly underwhelmed by B/G Constrictor in testing, but Jeff Cunningham has been crushing the Magic Online leagues with the deck. It also did decently well in the online PTQ the weekend before the Pro Tour, so we expected it to be somewhat popular, especially amongst players who did not have much time to test – as the deck is fairly straightforward and largely the same from last season.

The matchup largely comes down to Winding Constrictor and Verdurous Gearhulk. If you can stop these cards, then the rest of their deck becomes significantly weaker, and you can just beat them on pure power level. However, if you let these cards go unchecked, they can set up very powerful plays – especially if they have a combination of both these cards.

Mono-Green was one of my favorite decks throughout testing, and I wanted to make the deck work. Unfortunately, the deck was slightly too inconsistent for me to want to play it. The deck often got awkward draws, and the lack of card manipulation in the deck meant that it was prone to both mana screw and flooding. Rekindling Phoenix was also a major issue for the deck as it basically could never beat the card unless you had a Ghalta, Primal Hunger, and we expected the Phoenix to be popular.

Mono-Green is fairly straightforward to play against. Kill their biggest creatures that are threatening, and ignore the rest as you can generally outrace them. If they ever main phase a Blossoming Defense, assume that they are setting up for a Ghalta, Primal Hunger and using the Blossoming Defense as a ritual effect.

Going into the Pro Tour, Mono-Red aficionado Javier Dominguez spent a ton of time working on all of the different variations of Mono-Red, and ultimately came to the conclusion that the deck was just bad – all the one toughness creatures in the deck were too much of a liability against Goblin Chainwhirler.

Even Wing Chun Yam believed the deck was bad, but he ended up playing the deck anyway. That being said, we still thought the deck would be popular, as Mono-Red is always popular at the Pro Tour.

The matchup is largely about racing and applying as much pressure as you can, as both decks are bad at blocking. However, you cannot outrace them purely one to one as they are more aggressive, but you also have more removal spells than them, so you have to kill their key creatures and then start trying to race them.

One of your key cards is Rekindling Phoenix, as it is good on both offense and defense. If you ever get a chance to block with Rekindling Phoenix, you almost always want to do so, as they have enough removal to deal with the creature if they wanted to, and it is important to save as much life as possible before you start turning the corner with your more expensive and powerful creatures. You are very happy if you can trade the Rekindling Phoenix for a creature and then have them waste a removal spell dealing with the token.

Although we did not expect this deck to be popular, our teammate Jason Chung was hot on the deck, so we tested this matchup extensively.

The key to the matchup is to play as aggressively as you can, as they are favored to win the long game with their ability to out grind you with cards such as Champion of Wits and Walking Ballista. One of the pivotal aspects of the game is how you want to trade in combat, as you want to be aggressive and therefore attacking, but you also want to delay turning on their Gate to the Afterlife for as long as possible.

If your planeswalker is being attacked by a Lyra Dawnbringer and you do not want them to gain life from the angel, you can choose to crew Heart of Kiran multiple times until the planeswalker has zero loyalty and then the Lyra Dawnbringer would not get to deal the damage, and hence would not gain any life.

Assuming that you are not mana screwed and your opponent is aware of that, it is reasonable to expect Karn, Scion of Urza's top ability to net you a land a decent amount of the time. Since Karn, Scion of Urza is not a planeswalker that you are working up to an ultimate for, but rather it is a card advantage resource, you should be aggressively using its middle ability to grab a spell if you are flooded and/or just need something – especially if the planeswalker is not vulnerable to dying.

I hope you enjoyed the two-part series, as I covered the B/R Vehicles list that half our team played at Pro Tour Dominaria, with a full sideboard guide and key cards to play around in each matchup. In my next article, I will be covering our team's draft results from testing on Magic Online, as well as our pick order list for the Pro Tour.